LOS ANGELES >> After an eight-year spell without a novel, Amy Tan on Tuesday spoke about her new book and jokingly hinted at the possibility her grandmother was a courtesan or high-class prostitute.

Tans grandmother wore identical garb to some of Shanghais most popular courtesans because there was a sale in 1910. So form-fitting jackets with fur-lined collars, skin-tight trousers and intricately embroidered headbands must have been a trendy outfit.

Jokes aside, Tan said the history of women in her lineage has always been about survival, persistence, passion and tragedy. Many of her books are a cathartic exploration into her identity and some of the situations that molded it.

I just really started to think of who I was and who my mother was and if any of who we are was put in place because my grandmother was a courtesan, said Tan, 61.

Vromans Bookstore hosted the authors talk and book signing at UCLAs Little Theater. Talk show host Patt Morrison, a Los Angeles Times columnist, interviewed the Chinese-American writer in front of a sold-out room of about 250 people.

People came from far and near to see Tan, who wore a crinkled, loose-fitting purple jumpsuit; snakeskin-patterned socks; and Mary Jane shoes. Some arrived from Los Angeles, Pasadena, Montebello and Redlands. One girl came from Taiwan by proxy of a friend who recorded Tans answer to her question.

Dennis Surles, 65, left his house in Orange at 3:45 p.m. so that he could make it in time for the New York Times bestsellers 7 p.m. interview. He said he hoped to see Lou DeMattei, Tans husband. All three had attended Oregons Linfield College in 1970.

I like her imagination and her bravery because she was a very shy person who never said a word, and she found her way to speak, he said of 18-year-old Tan.

Surles didnt see his old friend, but he remembered a not-very-social Tan who hung out with boyfriend DeMattei in Larsell Hall. She was always looking down, he said.

And in a way, Tan has continued to look down, or at least backwards. In all five of her fictional books, Tan examined her maternal ancestry.

The Joy Luck Club, though usually called a novel, is actually a collection of short stories based on Tans family. The Chinese sisters the protagonist visits at the books end stemmed from her mothers life. Tans mother abandoned three daughters in Shanghai when she immigrated to the U.S., remarried and then had Tan.

In her new book, Tan revisited some of her favorite themes: the yin and yang of East and West, complicated mother-daughter relationships and the fate of able women who live in a patriarchal world.

In her newest novel, the narrator, Violet, grows up as the daughter of Shanghais most desirable and skillful bordello madame. Western and Eastern elites  although they never socialize in public ­ rub elbows and other body parts at Hidden Jade Path.

Violets mother, Lulu Mimi, is tricked into leaving Violet behind when she goes to San Francisco to escape a Shanghai that has become unsafe for foreigners. Violet is then abducted and forced to become a courtesan herself.

Violets life is capsized, just as the lives of so many immigrants are when they leave their motherland.

Tans real mother was a Shanghai socialite who wore chinchilla coats. She was arrested for leaving a vile, abusive husband, Tan said.

But when Tans mother ran away to San Francisco, she became a nobody who couldnt speak English, Tan added.

Although many of the audience members said Tans tales bridge the cultural gap, Tan said she always feared mainland Chinese people would call her writing a farce. This fear originated from her mother saying Tan is not, in fact, Chinese.

I feared I had written something, and its not Chinese because Im not Chinese, Tan said.

But she shouldnt have doubted herself. The Joy Luck Club is widely taught in China in English-languages classes.

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